This academic year, Tamkang receives 104 overseas students from Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Among the 47 graduates and 57 undergraduates, 30 are exchange students from sister universities and do not study for degrees here, while the other 74 do.

11 of those 47 graduates study at M.A. programs of the Graduate Institute of Japanese, representing 23 % of the overseas M.A. and Ph. D. students. The 39 M.A. students study at 17 different departments, and 8 Ph. D. students at 5. Magda Leayly Uela and Greta Mabela Mancilla, from Guatemala, are studying at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies; they enjoy the learning environment in Tamkang very much, and they say that they will try harder to get use to the life in Taiwan.

17 overseas undergraduates choose the Department of Chinese, 30% of the total. And 12 students go to the Department of International Business. Kadri Biskinler from Turkey is currently a freshman at the Department of International Business. He indicates that his father runs business with China and Taiwan, and he comes to Tamkang taking 21 credits. Though having been staying in Taiwan for two years, he indicates, he still has problem with Taiwanese food; water, dumpling and beef noodle are what he can eat and drink, and he mostly cooks by himself.

Malafou, from Taiwan’s allied country Tuvalu, is studying as a freshman at the Department of Electrical Engineering. He is often asked by his classmates, “Where is your country?” He says his mother country is located in the north of Fiji. He has a work at Tuvalu, and he suspends it and comes here to study electrical engineering to enhance his professional skills. Lectures in Chinese, though with English textbooks, are hard for him, and he needs to spend more time on the schoolwork. (~ Han-yu Huang )